Point-and-Click Adventure Game Review: Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - Baddest of the Bands

Baddest of the Bands is the third episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive people. This episode sees some improvements in some areas, although some areas feel lacking compared to Strong Badia the Free.

In Baddest of the Bands, Strong Bad decides to start a battle of the bands contest in order to raise money to fix his broken Fun Machine. He must get three bands on stage, and then sabotage those bands so that he can win the Battle of the Bands contest himself.

The storyline sees a dramatic downturn this time around, as a Battle of the Bands is a much less interesting storyline than uniting fractured countries to overthrow a corrupt government, as in Strong Badia the Free. The humor level is high though in this one, and after all humor is the bread and butter of all of the Homestar Runner universe productions. I found myself enjoying the humor in this game more than the previous two. Strong Bad's quips seemed much more sharp than either of it's predecessors.

The user-placable map is back from Homestar Ruiner. The only new location to be found here is a stage, which is used four times for the venue's four acts. There isn't much different about these locations, apart from one stage which is located next to a small body of water. The new character in this game is the mock-hair band Limozeen, presented here in their Saturday morning cartoon form on a cardboard cutout with a speaker and webcam attatched (so that the band can relax in their tour bus rather than deal with actually listening to the bad bands).

This time around, the Teen Girl Squad comic is not customizable. I'll try not to spoil too much, but the developers did manage to make the comic worthwhile to the game by integrating it into the story. This made the Teen Girl Squad experience much more satisfying in my opinion. I think it's great that Telltale is working the extra activities into the storyline starting with the metal detector in Strong Badia the Free. I hope that this trend continues, since it goes a long way to help keeping things from feeling tedious and tired.

Baddest of the Bands may not have the strongest plot, but it makes up for it with it's humor. The extra activities are beginning to feel less tedious as Telltale continue to work them into the plot of the main game. Strong Bad's quips are the meat of the games in the Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People series, and in Baddest of the Bands they are the sharpest yet.

Final Verdict: 3½ out of 5